PLAYER NAME: chel
CONTACT: pm this journal pls
HOW DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE GAME?: former player new character, but also sheep invited me

CHARACTER: Zhou Fei
CANON: The Legend of Fei
CANON POINT: Post-series.

BACKGROUND:

- Descended from Li Zheng, a legendary hero, and raised by her mother who succeeded him as chief of the 48 Strongholds, Zhou Fei remained cloistered on the mountain until she was around seventeen years old. After her cousin, Li Sheng fails to cross the heavily trapped Ximo River, he and Fei are rescued by Xie Yun, a stranger with incomparable lightness skills who’s come to deliver a message to Fei’s father.

- When the message causes Fei’s father, Lord Gan Tang to leave the mountain and answer a dying friend’s request to take up command of the Anping Army in his stead, Fei spends the next year trying to cross the Ximo River and get away from the strongholds to reunite with him. Instead of making it out the back door via the river, she beats her mother, The Chief during the stronghold’s customary trials and wins the right to leave the mountain along with Li Sheng. Before leaving, Fei’s mother teaches her the nine forms of her grandfather’s sword form, Snow Cleaving Blade.

- The two are sent on a mission along with others from the strongholds to bring back the surviving members of the Wu family. Li Sheng attempts to run away and is pursued by Fei who fails to catch him or find her way back to the group. Instead, she stumbles into a hidden tunnel adjacent to the prison inside the Huo Family Fort where she discovers Xie Yun, Wu ChuChu, and her younger brother.

- After rescuing them and heading to Huarong to hide in the inn until the strongholds can be reached, Disha, a malicious sect founded and led by Shen Tianshu a defector of the Anping Army burn down the inn leaving Fei and Wu Chuchu, a cherished lady around the same age as Fei to hide while Disha turns the city upsidedown looking for Chuchu.

- Choosing to hide in the quarters of the city’s magistrate, Fei encounters a peerless master, Ninth Madam Duan living as the magistrate’s concubine. Madam Duan, a former paramour of her grandfather with questionable and varying levels of sanity ignores Fei’s apparent disinterest in inheriting her martial art form, Wilted Flourish Palm, and joining her sect.

- Despite Fei’s refusal, Ninth Madam forces the Wilted Flourish Palm energy into Fei, who is left unconscious while her body struggles to adjust to the warring energies inside it. During this time Xie Yun finds his way back to Fei and Chuchu while Disha continues to close in.

- Ninth Madam Duan makes her last stand against Shen Tianshu, the master of Disha Heights Manor while a somewhat recovered Fei and Xie Yun retreat. While waiting for word of Ninth Madam, Fei laments over how poorly she’s done on this mission, and how she’s better off just going home. As rumors of Ninth Madam’s demise reach the inn where Fei and Xie Yun are recuperating, the pair find themselves enmeshed in a conflict between Yin Pei, an underling of Azure Dragon Master, a very bad dude, and literally everyone else inside the inn.

- After it’s revealed that the subject of Yin Pei’s search, Ji Yunchen, Blade of the North has been living as the inn’s cook in hiding, Azure Dragon Master appears and the group is forced to work together to retreat. During this time, Ji Yunchen imparts his blade form to Fei, Severed Water Binding Thread, and the lesson that she never becomes too blinded by her own strength and greatness, lest it leads her to ruin.

- Fei’s conflicting internal energies return to haunt her in the aftermath of assisting with Azure Dragon Master’s downfall, and Xie Yun rushes her to the home of Madame Nichang, master of a theater troupe of martial artist dancers for help. Though she comes very close to dying, through Madame Nichang’s abilities Fei is brought back to health. During her recovery, Fei manages to reconnect with people from the 48 Strongholds and finally make her way back home.

- Her return to the 48 Strongholds is far from peaceful and serves as a turning point in Fei’s story. As Disha begins to launch their assault on the strongholds, Fei returns and defends it alongside her family and her friends in spite of tremendous odds. During the course of this conflict, her mother returns, and Xie Yun reveals that he’s been searching for the Hai Tian Yi Se - the same mysterious artifacts that Disha have been searching for. After this admission he puts his life on the line to use skills Fei had previously not been aware he had, to help the people in the strongholds gain victory.

- Following this conflict Fei tells Xie Yun that she wants to join him in his hunt for the Hai Tian Yi Se, believing it to be evil because of all the pain and destruction that’s been wrought in the search to find it. Fei is unaware of both the formerly repressed and very fatal poison now moving through Xie Yun’s body and the fact that following Fei telling Xie Yun that she’ll travel with him her mother cordially invited him to get the fuck out.

- Departing the strongholds to look for him Fei calls upon the Peddler Gang to act as her eyes and ears, eventually tracking Xie Yun down while she pieces together the clues he’s left behind, finally forming a hazy picture of what’s happening that she can confront him with. After she tracks him down, gets the truth, and angrily promises that she will find a way to cure his poisoning despite his claims that it’s a hopeless cause. It only takes a few foiled escape attempts and getting handcuffed to Fei for Xie Yun to realize how serious about her promise she is.

- After another serious altercation with Disha leaves Xie Yun nearly incapacitated and on the verge of dying, Fei carries Xie Yun on her back in search of a shrine where she can beg Buddha to save him. Though she passes out before reaching her destination, the pair are saved by a mysterious old man who later reveals himself to be Xie Yun’s former master, along with more details of his condition and his past. He gives Fei a way to save Xie Yun and despite insurmountable odds, Fei leaves Xie Yun in Penglai and journeys across Jianghu for the things needed to temporarily restore his health and suppress the poison in his body for a while longer, buying him time until the solution believed to be contained within the Hai Tian Yi Se can be found.

- During this journey, Fei is relentlessly pursued by Disha. She also: comes to terms with the depth of her feelings for Xie Yun, befriends local martial icon and fashion legend Vermillion Bird Master, and works to continue piecing together the mystery of the Hai Tian Yi Se’s location. Each time she returns to Penglai with another ingredient, Xie Yun’s condition improves, and while they’re rarely conscious in the same place at the same time, that knowledge is enough for Fei.

- Once the poison in his body is temporarily abated and he wakes from his coma Xie Yun and Fei work together along with the group of friends and family they’ve amassed along the way to get between Disha and the Hai Tian Yi Se. Newly aware that it contains a medical scripture with the antidote for the poison still killing Xie Yun, Fei is driven to do anything to get to it before Disha does.

- Reaching the Hai Tian Yi Se is not without incident, and though she manages to recover half of the manuscript with the cure in it, Shen Tianshu of Disha retains the other half, along with part of a weapon-making manuscript detailing the process of making superior and nearly indestructible weapons. While in the winding catacombs where the treasure was housed Fei and Xie Yun also discover the private quarters of Lu Run, legendary scholar and hero, author of the medical manuscript they seek. While inside his rooms Fei finds a scroll detailing the Qiwu Technique which Xie Yun describes as “a little evil” and Fei pursues anyway.

- With time running out for Xie Yun, their friend Hecong, a physician specializing in poison works with what there is of the manuscript to make a cure for Xie Yun, while Fei prepares to face off against Shen Tianshu and the rest of Disha. Though the scrolls were damaged Hecong manages to make two concoctions, one that will definitely cure Xie Yun, and one that will probably kill him faster. Fei swears him to secrecy and makes arrangements to take one of the brews to test on herself, but the doctor spills the beans to Xie Yun who knocks her out and doesn’t allow her to go through with it.

- While Fei is unconscious Xie Yun takes one of the concoctions made by Hecong, and she wakes to find him beside her, no longer awake and somewhere between life and death. With him barely hanging on, Fei attempts to use the Qiwu Technique, using energy to pull Xie Yun back from death, and passing out again from her efforts.

- When she wakes up Xie Yun is cured, and she wifes the hell out of him.

- With Shen Tianshu using the weaponsmithing knowledge gained from the manuscript in the Hai Tian Yi Se, Fei and her allies both within the 48 Strongholds and beyond make a plan to attack Disha Heights Manor and bring Shen Tianshu down before Disha destroy Jianghu. Making her final stand against Shen Tianshu, she manages to defeat him using everything she’s learned as a martial artist.

- The downfall of Disha brings peace back to Jianghu, and Fei returns to the 48 Strongholds with Xie Yun, where they live peacefully, educating and training the next generation of future martial artists.

ABILITIES | POWERS:

Fei is a martial arts master and highly skilled in both melee and hand-to-hand combat with a gift for combining different fighting styles to suit her needs. She has demonstrated a high level of aptitude for learning new forms of combat quickly, often only needing to be shown how to do something once before she can do it herself. The styles of martial arts imparted to Fei and utilized by her (often in unorthodox combinations) are:

Snowcleaving Blade Form - A blade form invented by Fei's grandfather Li Zheng the Blade of the South, practiced by her mother Li Jinrong, and handed down to Fei when she departed the mountain, Snowcleaving Blade Form is characterized by its spiraling movements and a resonance that rings through the sword as it moves. Renowned for its ability to break or damage weapons wielded against it. (a visual)

Mayfly Steps - A technique of the Qi School intended for when one opponent is facing many or otherwise outmatched, said to allow the practitioner to become a 'one-man tactical form'. Additionally, its high jumps are essential for evasive maneuvers. (a visual)

Wilted Flourish Palm - A technique of hand-to-hand combat well suited for subduing an armed opponent and using the momentum of their sword against them, 'catching the wind' of a sword strike and using it to disarm that opponent. This form of combat features open-palmed strikes and the targeted use of qi to amplify blows and snap blades. (a visual)

Severed Water Binding Thread Form - A blade form imparted to Fei by Ji Yunchen, the Blade of the North. Unlike its counterpart the Southern Blade, this form of swordplay features wide, sweeping motions, that place the sword further away from the body while still favoring a twirling, circular motion. (a visual)

Qiwu Technique - A mental technique described as "a little evil" it is not stated explicitly in canon what the parameters for this are. Fei uses it in a last-ditch effort to pull Xie Yun back from the brink of death, for all appearances, it seems to employ the generation and transfer of qi between the practitioner and another. (a (tearjerky) visual)
Note: Given the lack of information about this technique, it's very unlikely to get used by Fei in-game, however, it might be a fun topic in conversation, you never know!

Apart from these forms, Fei has demonstrated an ability to unlock her own acupoints, and both lock and unlock the acupoints of others, incapacitating their arms temporarily or knocking them out completely. Additionally, Fei is an experienced horserider, and very used to surviving in the wilderness.

PERSONALITY:

"What's there to be afraid of? Give me ten years, I'll flatten this entire mountain!"

Fei’s gruff exterior is both an honest reflection of the no-nonsense, up-front person she is inside, as well as the personal set of armor she has learned to hide behind for any number of reasons, the first among these being her mother. The Chief was harder on Fei than she was on either of the cousins that Fei grew up alongside. After her needing to be rescued as a child caused her uncle’s death, her mother was quick to make allowances for his children and devote extra time to their training while Fei was spared the praise afforded her cousins and often blamed and punished for things either of them did. This harsh upbringing was tempered by her father’s gentler nature, but it also taught Fei how to appear strong no matter what was happening, and not reveal how much she cared about winning her mother’s or anyone’s approval. Despite the way the Chief treats her, Fei holds her mother in such high esteem that she blames herself when outside circumstances force her to deviate off course during her first trip down the mountain, believing that if they had stuck to her mother’s plan everything would have been fine. This straying from the plan also causes her to feel as though she will return home in disgrace, regardless of the fact that she has upheld her sect’s rules and taken out several threats to the common people while being sidetracked.

Because of how sparingly she was praised, Fei’s first instinct is to bristle when complimented, partially due to the fact that she just doesn’t know how to deal with it. Her gift for avoiding her own feelings was honed further while out in Jianghu traveling with Xie Yun. His lack of hesitance when it came to expressing his feelings or praising her perplexes Fei initially, and she makes short work of avoiding closeness until there is absolutely no way she can go on living in denial about what they mean to one another. Fei’s stubbornness also manifests itself in her relationship with Xie Yun in numerous ways. Once she learns about his poisoning she ignores any claim that it’s a hopeless cause and throws herself into saving him, going so far as to climb a mountain thousands of miles away in search of a cure.

Despite how brusque and easily provoked into a fight she can be, Fei’s principles make her a kind person underneath it all. She will help anyone who asks her for it, and is generous to share what she has, or knows with people she considers friends (though this is never without a bit of gentle ribbing along the way). Her friendship with Wu Chuchu exemplifies this. Though they come from very different worlds, Fei learns how to find commonality with Chuchu, and the pair become each other’s biggest cheerleaders through the ups and downs of their journey, supporting one another as they find their paths in life.

Life on the mountain also imbued Fei with a strong sense of justice. The rules of her sect prize putting the well-being of the people and the peace of the land above personal accolades, and while she absolutely loves to boast about her abilities, Fei will do the right thing because it is the right thing, and for no other reason. She is quick to put herself between danger and those unequipped to defend against it and will stake her life on doing whatever she believes is right.


SAMPLE: here and here

INVENTORY:
✓ The clothes on her back.
✓ A small carving of a sword hung around her neck with a cord
✓ Youhuang (Secluded Bamboo Grove): A sword crafted out of an unbreakable blend of metals by her counterpart, Xie Yun using the knowledge of weaponsmithing available in the Hai Tian Yi Se. It is able to cut through inferior weapons, most substances, and people.
✓ A roll pack containing an extra set of clothes, a tunic for colder weather, a flask of liquor, and a few days worth of dried foodstuffs.

NOTES: nope!

IF ACCEPTED, WOULD YOU WANT A PLOT-LIGHT OR PLOT-HEAVY CUSTOM INTRO? Plot-heavy could be fun but whatever works!